quote:Originally posted by orfeo: Doesn't matter if it's a set-up. If you tell a homophobic baker they've got to write otherwise legally acceptable homophilic messages, then you also have to tell a homophilic baker they've got to write otherwise legally acceptable homophobic messages.

'Otherwise legally acceptable' is a nice weasel phrasing to conceal the equivocation here.

Sexuality is a protected characteristic in law. Being an asshole isn't. So one message is potentially legally protected, not just acceptable, while the other is potentially legally restricted. They're just not interchangeable.

If anyone wants to declare their sexuality to be 'misanthrophic bastard', I won't stop them, but they'll have difficulty making that one stick in law.

t

What does sexuality being "a protected characteristic in law" actually mean? I think you have to unpack that thought a great deal more.

quote:Originally posted by stonespring:AND THEN I consider a hypothetical case of a baker being asked to bake a cake saying "No intermarriage: keep the races pure," or "Segregation forever," or some other message that is even more explicitly racist, Anti-Semitic, etc. I would think that even a sign maker would have a right to refuse to make a sign with writing like this on it, even if the sign was simply an enlarged reproduction of a printed image given to the sign maker and therefore did not involve any "artistic interpretation" whatsoever. But based on my reasoning above I can't justify this refusal, since here in the US there is no law against racist (or homophobic) speech, as long as you aren't directly encouraging people to commit violence against anyone. What are your thoughts?

The distinction I would tend to personally draw would to focus on whether the message is a negative message about a specific sub-group of people. If so, it becomes hate-speech. So if the message is positive or about ideas, eg "Islam is wonderful" then I'd bake the cake, but if the message is "Jews should die" then it's hate speech and I wouldn't bake the cake. If people wanted to celebrate something positive, then I'm all for supporting that, but when they deliberately set out to be nasty to people, I can't support that and I don't think the law should either. (There's a fairly obvious legal motivation with regard to promoting a civil society as to why the law ought to be interested in reducing deliberate personal nastiness between citizens)

quote:Originally posted by saysay:But in the past seven years, there's been a serious increase in the power of the illiberal left. They have to be fought.

I think what we've observed is a generational shift, and I think this is typical of any civil rights issue.

For example, slavery: At first people suggested that the abolition of slavery be considered; then they suggested it more loudly and vigorously; then they outright demanded it; then they legally required it; then they went to war over it when the southern states refused to follow the law. Or consider desegregation: First people suggested that desegregation be done; then they suggested it more forcefully; then they demanded it; then the courts required it; and when Alabama refused to follow the courts' decisions and proclaimed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", JFK had to send in the National Guard. The suppression of the Ku Klux Klan follows a similar pattern.

On the gay rights issues, if you go back a generation, most of the gay rights activists were very polite and pleaded for tolerance and asked for their ideas to get a hearing. A couple of decades later they demanded their rights. A couple of decades later, the courts have been enforcing their rights. Now there's talk in Alabama of simply ignoring the court's decisions like they did for desegregation, and it might actually come to Obama having to call in the national guard like JFK had to for desegregation. (Those people don't seem to learn from history and realize that they are always on the wrong side of every moral issue ever (pro-slavery, pro-Jim Crow, anti-women's-suffrage, anti-interracial marriage, anti-integration, anti-gay etc))

So I see this as a predictable pattern for civil rights issues. It's not a matter of the "illiberal left" getting out of control. Legalize same-sex marriage, prohibit discrimination and hate-speech, and it's done, problem solved, and we can all move on to whatever future civil rights movement history has in store for us (my money's on the rights of animals or of artificial intelligences).

And in terms of the increasing backlash against anti-gay sentiment, I think it's simply a matter of a basic principle: Offend people enough and you'll get a reaction. If you piss people off severely enough and oppress them enough they will respond with anger, and that is predictable. You can talk about 'free speech' until the cows come home, but anyone who is using that speech to deliberately offend and antagonize others and using laws to demean and downgrade others is pretty short sighted if they don't realize that the offended parties might well take action if they are sufficiently offended. (Charlie Hebdo being an example of this principle)

quote:It doesn't help that the mainstream media has a habit of misrepresenting religious views that it doesn't understand.

Mainstream media regularly misrepresents every kind of dispute because whoever goes to the media first tends to get their side of the story across first. That has nothing to do with religion per se. I don't think either of your links here actually helps your point, because in neither of these cases was the alleged misrepresentation particularly significant.
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In UK law, my terms are defined with reference to the Equality Act 2010. US state and federal law is sufficiently complicated that I will confine myself to the observation that where such provisions apply, they seem similar to the UK provisions, but that they do not apply everywhere with respect to all the classes protected in UK law.

And thank you for your patronising 'hint', but I actually think I've been pretty clear. One of the things that 'protected' means in this context is that (where such laws run) a baker can refuse to serve me because I'm a horrible, rude customer, but not because I'm queer.

Posted
But it's the person that's protected, not the message. You started talking about legally protected messages, and that isn't what anti-discrimination law covers. It covers the treatment of you, as a person.

quote:Originally posted by orfeo: But it's the person that's protected, not the message. You started talking about legally protected messages, and that isn't what anti-discrimination law covers. It covers the treatment of you, as a person.

Not true. You introduced the concept of a 'legally acceptable homophobic message', and a lot of stuff involving the word 'homophile'.

Let's break this down, then, shall we:

If I go to the shop and say "I'd like a wedding cake with two grooms on the top, please", then I can reasonably expect to get what I pay for. If they'll sell one with a mixed-sex couple on, but not with a same-sex couple, that's clearly discrimination on the basis of sexuality. (Implicitly my sexuality, although for the purposes of this thought experiment I could be straight and buying for a gay couple among my friends.)

If I go to the shop and say "Gimme a fuckin' cake", I can reasonably expect to leave with no cake, whether I'm there with my wife or wearing a pride t-shirt.

The case in hand is much more like the latter than the former.

I don't give a damn whether the buyer's obnoxious statement is protected free speech or not. It's a total red herring. He can't compel the bakery to provide it.

And I'm really, really perplexed that anyone thinks there's any ambiguity about this. This guy has no legal right to be served anything by the bakery, and that's that.

quote:Originally posted by orfeo: But it's the person that's protected, not the message. You started talking about legally protected messages, and that isn't what anti-discrimination law covers. It covers the treatment of you, as a person.

Not true. You introduced the concept of a 'legally acceptable homophobic message', and a lot of stuff involving the word 'homophile'.

Let's break this down, then, shall we:

If I go to the shop and say "I'd like a wedding cake with two grooms on the top, please", then I can reasonably expect to get what I pay for. If they'll sell one with a mixed-sex couple on, but not with a same-sex couple, that's clearly discrimination on the basis of sexuality. (Implicitly my sexuality, although for the purposes of this thought experiment I could be straight and buying for a gay couple among my friends.)

If I go to the shop and say "Gimme a fuckin' cake", I can reasonably expect to leave with no cake, whether I'm there with my wife or wearing a pride t-shirt.

The case in hand is much more like the latter than the former.

I don't give a damn whether the buyer's obnoxious statement is protected free speech or not. It's a total red herring. He can't compel the bakery to provide it.

And I'm really, really perplexed that anyone thinks there's any ambiguity about this. This guy has no legal right to be served anything by the bakery, and that's that.

t

If he has no legal right to be served anything by the bakery, than neither does a gay person have any legal right to be served anything by the bakery.

Either that, or you've just claimed that homosexuals have greater rights than heterosexuals, rather than equal rights.

I don't think your analysis is correct, precisely because you dismiss the text on the cake as a 'red herring', as if the sole purpose of a cake is always nothing more than to get a concoction of ingredients that taste nice. If this were true, nobody would ever get ANYTHING written on a cake.

But people DO get things written on cakes, and cake shops keep offering cakes with writing on them, and a lot of cake shops offer to write the message of your choice on the cake.

If you've got a shop that simply doesn't offer writing, or says - to everyone - that no, sorry, they don't take particular messages, they just offer cakes with 'Happy Birthday' on them, then there's no issue. But as soon as you have a shop that says that it offers the service of writing a message of your choice, you DO run into issues of free speech, and you waving those issues away as a red herring does little to convince me.

[ 28. January 2015, 09:15: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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quote:Originally posted by orfeo: But as soon as you have a shop that says that it offers the service of writing a message of your choice, you DO run into issues of free speech, and you waving those issues away as a red herring does little to convince me.

I don't think you do have the issues of free speech. Aren't publishers who allow self-funded publications allowed to decide who they will and won't publish? Aren't T-shirt designers allowed to decline to print what they regard as an offensive slogan? Are internet forums allowed to not take posts from annoying posters?

The question is whether or not the decision to not take my posts is discriminatory or not. If you say mdijon is boring and winds me up, I'm going to ban him then there's no law that says you can't. If you say mdijon is from a despised ethnic group I'm going to ban him then I think you're in trouble.

quote:Originally posted by orfeo: But as soon as you have a shop that says that it offers the service of writing a message of your choice, you DO run into issues of free speech, and you waving those issues away as a red herring does little to convince me.

I don't think you do have the issues of free speech. Aren't publishers who allow self-funded publications allowed to decide who they will and won't publish? Aren't T-shirt designers allowed to decline to print what they regard as an offensive slogan? Are internet forums allowed to not take posts from annoying posters?

The question is whether or not the decision to not take my posts is discriminatory or not. If you say mdijon is boring and winds me up, I'm going to ban him then there's no law that says you can't. If you say mdijon is from a despised ethnic group I'm going to ban him then I think you're in trouble.

I don't think it's safe assume that all of those kinds of businesses are in the same position, or that even all business of the same kind are automatically in the same position.

How is this publisher holding themselves out? What are they promising? How they are trying to attract customers?

More than anything else, I think a great deal depends on the policies that have been stated UP FRONT. There's absolutely nothing worse, if you're a business trying to defend yourself against a complaint of this nature, than having acted against your own stated policies and/or your own past documented behaviour.

I'm quite sure that publishers ARE allowed to decide who they will and won't publish, but if they decide to exclude some publication on a ground that hasn't otherwise been applied, it's going to be very different from a situation where the ground has been applied to others. And a publisher that has consistently stated "we reserve the final decision as to whether to publish your work, no guarantees" is going to be in a completely different position from a publisher who, in an attempt to attract business, has been enthusiastically conveying that they'd love to publish your material but who suddenly has qualms over the nature of your particular material.

Right now, there is some heated complaining in some gay circles about Facebook, because Facebook is removing posts and suspending accounts over images of men kissing or cuddling. This is happening because of a dedicated campaign by some homophobes to report 'offensive' images, and the Facebook machinery appears to be kicking into gear fairly mindlessly when an account has been reported multiple times - even if there's just one "friend" of the account doing all the reporting. The anger in the gay community isn't because they think Facebook has no right to control the type of images published on Facebook. The anger is because far more sexually provocative heterosexual images are sailing through with no consequences. Perception of bias and favouritism is the cause of the trouble.

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Posted
Orfeo, you are wrong, and you're also mischaracterising the position of disadvantaged groups with respect to the protections offered by equalities legislation, both in the UK and the US. But you seem to want to respond with ever longer walls of text telling me that black is white. So I think I'm done here.

If you really think a homophobic message is morally and legally equivalent to a 'homophile' one, that's your problem.

Posted
Of course I don't think it's morally equivalent, but the entire question is to the extent to which we can impose our own moral viewpoint on the people around us.

When you walk into a bakery that has (1) offered itself as a business open to the public at large, and (2) offered a service of writing requested messages, at what point is the bakery allowed to give you a moral opinion about the content of your message?

I think there is at least a very serious question as to why the mood on the ship has been to say that the bakery CAN'T reject a pro-gay message, yet say that it CAN reject a anti-gay message. That's not giving homosexuals equal treatment. That's giving homosexuals favourable treatment, and protecting pro-gay opinions over and above anti-gay ones. That's moving into the realms of positive discrimination. And even though I'm thoroughly pro-gay, that strikes me as a serious philosophical issue.

As to your complaints about the length of my posts, if you can't handle an exploration of this issue that doesn't fit within a soundbite, and suggests it might be complex, that is YOUR problem.

[ 28. January 2015, 10:27: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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quote:Originally posted by orfeo: Of course I don't think it's morally equivalent, but the entire question is to the extent to which we can impose our own moral viewpoint on the people around us.

When you walk into a bakery that has (1) offered itself as a business open to the public at large, and (2) offered a service of writing requested messages, at what point is the bakery allowed to give you a moral opinion about the content of your message?

They'd be entirely within their rights to say "we don't do political slogans", as long as that policy was applied evenly. They're not compelled to write pro-gay slogans; they're compelled not to exclude customers for being (or appearing to be) gay - assuming, of course, that the law in the relevant US state works analogously to similar laws elsewhere, which we haven't clearly established. In UK law at least, refusing a pro-gay slogan because it was pro-gay could be seen as discriminating on the assumption, whether true or false, that the customer was gay.

quote:I think there is at least a very serious question as to why the mood on the ship has been to say that the bakery CAN'T reject a pro-gay message, yet say that it CAN reject a anti-gay message. That's not giving homosexuals equal treatment. That's giving homosexuals favourable treatment, and protecting pro-gay opinions over and above anti-gay ones. That's moving into the realms of positive discrimination. And even though I'm thoroughly pro-gay, that strikes me as a serious philosophical issue.

Here in the UK at least, hate speech is not protected by law, but rather restricted. This 'favourable treatment' thing is nonsense. When there's as much straight-bashing as queer-bashing, and when people are fired for being straight as often as for being gay, when gay children don't live in fear of their own parents, then we'll talk about who gets favourable treatment.

quote:Originally posted by orfeo: Are you not now acknowledging the very point I was making, that it's gay customers that are protected rather than gay messages?

I am trying to illustrate the connection between the content of the message and presumptions about the customer. You were the one who began this line about some messages being permissible and others not.

The bigot is going to lose the case, and for obvious reasons. It has nothing to do with us queers getting special treatment.

quote:Originally posted by Teufelchen: You were the one who began this line about some messages being permissible and others not.

But I didn't say that it was discrimination law or hate speech law that was going to determine that all on its own in a simple fashion. You more or less made a leap to that assumption and accused me of using weasel words to hide it.

Anti-discrimination laws don't often deal with speech, and indeed I've recently had several rounds of Byron making extensive criticisms of the fact that Australian discrimination law would dare to intrude on that territory at all (which it does in the area of race).

The point of raising whether a message is itself legally permissible is that there are laws in at least some places which mean that a message on a cake would be a problem even if you baked the cake yourself. THAT'S about the message. We only get as far as questions about the bakery if we assume that the message you want on your cake would be allowed on your own, self-baked cake. If the message would be hate speech, it would be hate speech regardless of who baked the cake.

UK law, as far as I know, has some restrictions on hate speech. I very much doubt that that American anti-discrimination law has anything to say about what you can or can't say. But what we're dealing with is a far more complicated situation where speech interacts with the provision of a service, and the degree to which people who offer their services as a vehicle for speech can then pick and choose which speech they are a vehicle for.

You're basically proposing a position where a gay person, as a member of a protected class, can be in a better position than non-protected people by forcing a service provider to be an unwilling vehicle for a pro-gay message. It's far from obvious that that laws about NON-DISCRIMINATION in service provision are a trump card in this way, that are actually likely to give pro-gay messages an advantage rather than equality. If it's a clash between service provision laws and free speech laws, why should the service provision laws be the ones that win out? Does the baker have speech rights, or are they treated as just being a vehicle for someone else's opinions, a mere hired speechwriting gun?

[ 28. January 2015, 11:06: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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quote:Originally posted by orfeo:You're basically proposing a position where a gay person, as a member of a protected class, can be in a better position than non-protected people by forcing a service provider to be an unwilling vehicle for a pro-gay message. It's far from obvious that that laws about NON-DISCRIMINATION in service provision are a trump card in this way, that are actually likely to give pro-gay messages an advantage rather than equality.

Again: You can come back and tell me I'm a member of a privileged class when LGBT people don't live in fear of straight people. Until then, it's bollocks.

quote:Originally posted by orfeo:You're basically proposing a position where a gay person, as a member of a protected class, can be in a better position than non-protected people by forcing a service provider to be an unwilling vehicle for a pro-gay message. It's far from obvious that that laws about NON-DISCRIMINATION in service provision are a trump card in this way, that are actually likely to give pro-gay messages an advantage rather than equality.

Again: You can come back and tell me I'm a member of a privileged class when LGBT people don't live in fear of straight people. Until then, it's bollocks.

t

You seem to think that the label of privilege or disadvantage, once obtained, automatically applies in all contexts and all circumstances, and that the very real disadvantage of LGBT people in lots of circumstances automatically means it's impossible for them to end up advantaged in any particular circumstance.

I don't agree. I'm privileged when I walk into one of the gay bars in Melbourne that has an explicit legal right to exclude women. That privilege is given for a very specific reason, and a lot of it has to do with redressing disadvantages I suffer elsewhere, but that doesn't stop it being a privilege.

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quote:Originally posted by Lamb Chopped: I AM on the sharp-and-pointy end of this policy for several reasons, you remember. I know what I'm suggesting. I think the alternative is worse.

I may well be misreading LC. But I *think* maybe she's saying that she and her family (and probably her Vietnamese religious community) experience discrimination, too--and that's informing her views. She's not (IMHO) saying anything against LGBT folks; but, as someone who's faced discrimination for other reasons, she knows how bad it can get--and she thinks her social pressure/education approach is better than the brute force of the law.

Posted
Sometimes, the education doesn't work. How many centuries of education will it take for residents of Dixie to stop being hateful to blacks? Come to that, how long will it take for the northern states to accept blacks? When can we expect education will allow Canadians as a whole to accept the native population?

Something educative has allowed Canadians to accept GLBTs, so the process does work, just as a form of education has allowed most churches to accept divorce as a human reality.

But I see the anti-vaxxers and the anti-evolutionists and the climate-change-deniers as consciously avoiding anything educational dealing with fact. How does one "educate" willful stupidity?

Posted
One interesting quirk of the UK's equality law is that you don't need to be a member of a protected group to benefit from it  if someone assumes you're gay and refuses to serve you, you're protected even if you're straight as an arrow. So I don't think this turns into "Gay people have greater rights", more "Everyone has greater rights when anti-gay sentiment is involved".
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Posted
Different injustices take longer to remedy than others. In most ways, there's not a lot of active anti-Semitic discrimination in the United States. That all happened in the first half of the twentieth century. It's been taking Black people much longer than that, as President Obama said the other day; there's been a lot of progress but there's still a lot of work to do on racial discrimination.

Rather than waiting around for a century or two for people to get educated, start with the law and do the education as well. If the education succeeds, the law will be an amusing archaic law like the ones against playing cards on the Sabbath and it can be discarded out as irrelevant. Sadly that's not the case right now.
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Posted
A Northern Ireland court has just ruled against Ashers Bakery in the case of the "support gay marriage" Queerspace cake.

The judge's ruling seems a little unclear at the boundaries between the sexuality of the customer and the message, but the core of her message seems to be that ordering a cake in support of the legalization of gay marriage is something that gay people are far more likely to do than straight people, and so refusing to make the cake is direct discrimination on grounds of sexuality. Cf. discrimination against "people wearing kippot".
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quote:Originally posted by Lamb Chopped: I AM on the sharp-and-pointy end of this policy for several reasons, you remember. I know what I'm suggesting. I think the alternative is worse.

I may well be misreading LC. But I *think* maybe she's saying that she and her family (and probably her Vietnamese religious community) experience discrimination, too--and that's informing her views. She's not (IMHO) saying anything against LGBT folks; but, as someone who's faced discrimination for other reasons, she knows how bad it can get--and she thinks her social pressure/education approach is better than the brute force of the law.

quote:Originally posted by saysay:But in the past seven years, there's been a serious increase in the power of the illiberal left. They have to be fought.

I think what we've observed is a generational shift, and I think this is typical of any civil rights issue.

So I see this as a predictable pattern for civil rights issues. It's not a matter of the "illiberal left" getting out of control. Legalize same-sex marriage, prohibit discrimination and hate-speech, and it's done, problem solved, and we can all move on to whatever future civil rights movement history has in store for us

I think what people are talking about when they speak about the "illiberal left" is exactly the attitude that you are displaying here. If the law agrees with a liberal position on an issue then 'hate speech' should be prohibited and 'its done'. The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point so that you then get 'its done'. 'Its done' here seems to mean 'that is now a closed issue, anyone even trying to discuss it should be prohibited from doing so because that is 'hate speech''.
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quote:Originally posted by Starlight:So I see this as a predictable pattern for civil rights issues. It's not a matter of the "illiberal left" getting out of control. Legalize same-sex marriage, prohibit discrimination and hate-speech, and it's done, problem solved, and we can all move on to whatever future civil rights movement history has in store for us

I think what people are talking about when they speak about the "illiberal left" is exactly the attitude that you are displaying here. If the law agrees with a liberal position on an issue then 'hate speech' should be prohibited and 'its done'. The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point so that you then get 'its done'. 'Its done' here seems to mean 'that is now a closed issue, anyone even trying to discuss it should be prohibited from doing so because that is 'hate speech''.

Not really an issue in the American context of the Portland bakery case. The First Amendment prohibits any kind of hate speech laws.

quote:Originally posted by Bibliophile:I think what people are talking about when they speak about the "illiberal left" is exactly the attitude that you are displaying here.

Okay, well that's probably not surprising, because I'm probably one of the people who constitute the "illiberal left" insofar as that designation makes any sense. I suggest the "moral left" would be a better term, as what drives the "illiberalism" (and the "left" part of it, for that matter) is a strong moral code and strong sense of moral outrage at the evils the religious right has been perpetrating. I'm not prepared to stand by and give evil a free pass, and so in that sense I'm "intolerant" and "illiberal".

quote:The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point

Hate speech means saying nasty things about a minority group.

If one particular political viewpoint finds that restriction far more problematic than the other side does, in terms of expressing their arguments and views, then that probably says something significant about the immorality of their views.

quote:'Its done' here seems to mean 'that is now a closed issue, anyone even trying to discuss it should be prohibited from doing so because that is 'hate speech''.

Nope. "It's done" in my post was not referring to ending discussion or suppressing viewpoints but to having fully enacted all the desirable laws.

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:Okay, well that's probably not surprising, because I'm probably one of the people who constitute the "illiberal left" insofar as that designation makes any sense. I suggest the "moral left" would be a better term, as what drives the "illiberalism" (and the "left" part of it, for that matter) is a strong moral code and strong sense of moral outrage at the evils the religious right has been perpetrating.

Oh Please! What would the left know about strong moral codes?

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:

quote:The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point

Hate speech means saying nasty things about a minority group.

The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'
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Posted
A much more serious issue than cake icing has surfaced in the UK. Pension companies are refusing to make pensions available to same sex partners with the same rules as hetero partners, so that where a widow would get £200 odd, a SSP would only get £40 - these figures are pulled out of my vague memory (I was driving at the time).The reason given is that the company will only calculate from the time that civil partnerships became available.I didn't hear if they would limit a widow's pension according to the date of marriage or not. I was left with the idea that a woman who had been married to a man for less than the time in which a SS partnership could exist would still be eligible for the larger amount.If I have this correctly, it is not acceptable.
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quote:Originally posted by Starlight:Okay, well that's probably not surprising, because I'm probably one of the people who constitute the "illiberal left" insofar as that designation makes any sense. I suggest the "moral left" would be a better term, as what drives the "illiberalism" (and the "left" part of it, for that matter) is a strong moral code and strong sense of moral outrage at the evils the religious right has been perpetrating.

Oh Please! What would the left know about strong moral codes?

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:

quote:The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point

Hate speech means saying nasty things about a minority group.

The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'

Can you give examples which illuminate your query about the left and moral codes?And can you give examples of "hate speech" being used to describe particular polite and respectful expressions of opinion?

I stick with the definition of hate speech meaning either saying nasty things about identifiable groups of people, or to people identified as being in those groups.
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quote:Originally posted by Starlight:Okay, well that's probably not surprising, because I'm probably one of the people who constitute the "illiberal left" insofar as that designation makes any sense. I suggest the "moral left" would be a better term, as what drives the "illiberalism" (and the "left" part of it, for that matter) is a strong moral code and strong sense of moral outrage at the evils the religious right has been perpetrating.

Oh Please! What would the left know about strong moral codes?

Speaking as an amoral unashamed lefty, I'm drive by some very specific moral beliefs. For example, that no one person is more valuable than another. That persecuting people because of perceived difference is wrong. That providing for people's needs is a good thing. They all inform my leftism.

quote:

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:

quote:The term 'hate speech' seems to be very generously interpreted to mean any speech that opposes liberal ideology on some point

Hate speech means saying nasty things about a minority group.

The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'

You don't get it do you? It's perfectly possible to express the most obnoxious and hateful opinions in a very polite manner, and equally to agitate for good in a forthright and uncompromising manner. You seem to confuse medium and message. If you say you believe that homosexual relationships are wrong, you are disagreeing. When you go on to call gays a cancer in our society and start saying how they should all be thrown into jail or shunned or made to feel how disgusting you think they are, you're starting to cross into hate speech.

Posted
I've always found the left to be rather pious and over-solemn about morality. Of course, it depends on who you mean - somebody like Mao was pretty cynical. But the British left tend to resemble anxious Anglican spinsters riding their bikes through the morning mist to communion.

That's supposed to be Orwell, a rather eccentric lefty. Read his piece 'A Hanging' for a rather moral and well written essay. The man about to be executed is being led to the gallows, and walks round a puddle, to avoid getting wet - oh what an eye Orwell had.

quote:Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider: You don't get it do you? It's perfectly possible to express the most obnoxious and hateful opinions in a very polite manner, and equally to agitate for good in a forthright and uncompromising manner. You seem to confuse medium and message. If you say you believe that homosexual relationships are wrong, you are disagreeing. When you go on to call gays a cancer in our society and start saying how they should all be thrown into jail or shunned or made to feel how disgusting you think they are, you're starting to cross into hate speech.

Here's my question: where does Brandon Eich fit into all this?

Because that whole situation left a rotten taste in my mouth, and still does. It felt less like a principled protest and more like one tech company (OKCupid) using its customers as proxy warriors against another. And if the CEO of a major company can lose his job because of a politically unpopular opinion, where does that leave the millions of Americans who happen to agree with him?

And as far as I know, he didn't even say anything. He donated money to a campaign that ultimately lost in the courts.

I don't see the social justice in that.

quote:Originally posted by Starlight: If one particular political viewpoint finds that restriction far more problematic than the other side does, in terms of expressing their arguments and views, then that probably says something significant about the immorality of their views.

quote:Originally posted by Bibliophile:The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'

That's your opinion. And it's an opinion about what you believe is in other people's heads. And you have presented no facts to back it up.

In reality, there are many countries that have hate speech laws. I suggest you go look them up and see what they really say, and how they have been applied in practice, regardless of what you think other people are thinking.

quote:Originally posted by Bibliophile:Oh Please! What would the left know about strong moral codes?

What did you think motivated people on the left? Tea and biscuits?

The entire concept of human rights, the basic modern political paradigm, utilitarianism, the social gospel, universal healthcare, etc are all products of liberalism or the left.

quote:The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'

What matters is whether the nasty language is being used against a specific identifiable group of people on the basis of some personal trait.

quote:Originally posted by Keromaru:Not necessarily. Remember when the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Iraq war?

Nope. I wasn't following US politics at the time, so know literally nothing about that topic other than what 5 minutes of reading wikipedia now has told me. I don't understand why you considered that a counter-example to what I said. The crazy right in the US appears to have used extreme-patriotism as a means to shut down all expressed opposition to the Iraq war. That's not an example of suppressing hate-speech, that's just an example of suppressing speech period.

And, as per usual, it's an example of the right being vastly more authoritarian than the left, which seems to be a fairly common thing - eg looking at plots of variouspoliticalparties from different countries around the Western world shows a consistent bias towards authoritarianism on the right and consistently less authoritarian bias on the left.

quote:Originally posted by Penny S: A much more serious issue than cake icing has surfaced in the UK. Pension companies are refusing to make pensions available to same sex partners with the same rules as hetero partners, so that where a widow would get £200 odd, a SSP would only get £40 - these figures are pulled out of my vague memory (I was driving at the time).The reason given is that the company will only calculate from the time that civil partnerships became available.I didn't hear if they would limit a widow's pension according to the date of marriage or not. I was left with the idea that a woman who had been married to a man for less than the time in which a SS partnership could exist would still be eligible for the larger amount.If I have this correctly, it is not acceptable.

It's not acceptable but it's the law and until it changes same sex marriage is not marriage. Logically it is only a problem in defined benefits schemes, and given all sorts of factors nothing is going to change unless and until the law does.

To assist in interpreting this remark I'm gay and work in the field.

--------------------Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".

quote:Originally posted by Keromaru:Here's my question: where does Brandon Eich fit into all this?

Because that whole situation left a rotten taste in my mouth, and still does. It felt less like a principled protest and more like one tech company (OKCupid) using its customers as proxy warriors against another.

Eich did not speak out against equal marriage, he contributed to to an active campaign to fight it. Suppressing rights is supposed to be cool with one's customer base?

quote:Originally posted by Keromaru: And if the CEO of a major company can lose his job because of a politically unpopular opinion, where does that leave the millions of Americans who happen to agree with him?

So, people who wish to restrict the rights of others, even though said rights will in no substantive way affect their own rights, I'm supposed to feel sympathy for them?

Posted
Thank you, Thunderbunk. It's always difficult to be sure I've got things right when I'm listening and driving, as my brain switches off sound input as soon as there's something on the road that needs attention.

It is clearly something that needs attention.

Nobody has ever asked me for smaller contributions because I am single. I assume the same applies to previously unmarried gays and lesbians.
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quote:Originally posted by Keromaru: Here's my question: where does Brandon Eich fit into all this?

Eich stepped down because he'd lost the confidence of the Mozilla community that he'd treat them fairly, for fairly justifiable reasons.

More the the point, we seem to have moved in to an era when CEOs are much more public figures than they have been at any time since the 1920s. Part of their job is public relations. One could just as easily argue that Desmond Hague's resignation was unfair since the actions that forced him out had nothing to do with his official position, but maintaining public goodwill is now part of that job.

Posted
I really, really, really do not get why Christianity thinks it is so special that the laws of a secular country should bow to it?

If Catholics and other Christians want to say homosexual behavior is a sin according to their religion then fine, go ahead knock yourselves out. Just please leave the rest of us who don't share your opinion alone.

How would Christians feel if we decided to make hair salons illegal because Sikhs believe that cutting hair is against the commandments of God?
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quote:Originally posted by Macrina: I really, really, really do not get why Christianity thinks it is so special that the laws of a secular country should bow to it?

If Catholics and other Christians want to say homosexual behavior is a sin according to their religion then fine, go ahead knock yourselves out. Just please leave the rest of us who don't share your opinion alone.

How would Christians feel if we decided to make hair salons illegal because Sikhs believe that cutting hair is against the commandments of God?

I think there's an element of 'ressentiment' going on, that is, 'we who were great are now cast down, and some bastard is responsible.'

Christianity has historically played a large part in moral formulations, and now it sees secular society turning to other formulations today. Right wing Christians tend to spit with fury, envy, jealousy, blame, contempt, oh well, I could go on.

Although it does seem a very targeted fury - all the divorced people seem to get off quite lightly, compared with the gayziz, yet divorce actually ends a marriage.

quote:Originally posted by Bibliophile:Oh Please! What would the left know about strong moral codes?

What did you think motivated people on the left?

Pride, envy, wrath, amongst other things

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:The entire concept of human rights, the basic modern political paradigm, utilitarianism, the social gospel, universal healthcare, etc are all products of liberalism or the left.

So various things the left likes are products of the left. Your point being?

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:

quote:The way the left interpret the term 'hate speech' is to include any disagreement with left wing ideas of 'progress' no matter how politely or respectfully expressed. It doesn't include the most vile, nasty, aggressive or even violent language if those words are spoken in support of 'equality'

What matters is whether the nasty language is being used against a specific identifiable group of people on the basis of some personal trait.

No what matters is that the identifiable group be one the left deems worthy of its patronage. Then anything deemed insulting is seen as 'hate speech' (see for example here.) On the other hand groups not deemed worthy of the patronage of the left (e.g. Christians) can be insulted without anyone seeing it as hate speech. For example a number of people (including it seems yourself in an earlier post in this thread) have suggested that people who worked at Charlie Hebdo (i.e. people who were the actual victims of murderous religious repression) were somehow to blame for their fate. That doesn't gat called 'hate speech'. They weren't Christians but they were white middle class Frenchmen and so didn't fall into any of the all important 'protected classes'.

The left in particular tolerates bile directed at its political opponents who can be described in the most hateful language imaginable without calling it 'hate speech'.

quote:Originally posted by Macrina:I really, really, really do not get why Christianity thinks it is so special that the laws of a secular country should bow to it?

If Catholics and other Christians want to say homosexual behavior is a sin according to their religion then fine, go ahead knock yourselves out. Just please leave the rest of us who don't share your opinion alone.

A lot of folks in Protestant majority countries have gotten used to the idea of the legal definition of marriage being identical to their religious definition of marriage. It might be useful for some of the more anxious Protestants to ask a Catholic or two of their acquaintance "so how do you deal with the legal definition of marriage being different than your sacramental definition of marriage?" It's something the Catholic Church has had to deal with a lot in its dioceses in countries that allow remarriage after divorce.

quote:Originally posted by Starlight: The entire concept of human rights, the basic modern political paradigm, utilitarianism, the social gospel, universal healthcare, etc are all products of liberalism or the left.

So various things the left likes are products of the left. Your point being?

So we are left to think that you do not like the listed items, which many people consider to be public goods? You do not believe in rights available to all humans? You do not believe in universal healthcare? As examples.

quote:Originally posted by Starlight: What did you think motivated people on the left?

Pride, envy, wrath, amongst other things

As Mousethief has pointed out, those things seem to often be what motivates the right.

quote:

quote:Originally posted by Starlight:The entire concept of human rights, the basic modern political paradigm, utilitarianism, the social gospel, universal healthcare, etc are all products of liberalism or the left.

So various things the left likes are products of the left. Your point being?

You asked "What would the left know about strong moral codes?" So let's take human rights. Over a couple of centuries, liberals basically created the concept of human rights out of nothing, enshrined it into international law, and proceeded to enforce it globally. Does globally enforcing a moral code sound to you like a group that knows nothing "about strong moral codes"?

quote:The left in particular tolerates bile directed at its political opponents who can be described in the most hateful language imaginable without calling it 'hate speech'.

I think a free and expressive exchange of political ideas is fine. Political views are freely chosen and do not constitute a personal trait in the same way race, gender or sexuality do.

quote:Originally posted by Penny S:So we are left to think that you do not like the listed items, which many people consider to be public goods? You do not believe in rights available to all humans? You do not believe in universal healthcare?

Posted
hostingCan I remind people that general discussion of 'this is what the left is like/this is what the right is like' is not a Dead Horse? Neither are general arguments about 'what is hate speech?' Such general threads belong in Purgatory.

Diatribes about how 'the left is like this/the right is like that' are best made on the Hell board.

If your post is motivated more by irritation with a particular poster, rather than a desire to discuss general principles, then Hell is your option. Please do not import conflicts from the other boards. Personal attacks/ getting personal in uncomplimentary ways about other posters always belong on the Hell board - do not do it here.

This thread is for discussing what sort of speech should/should not be allowed on cakes with relation to DH issues.

Can people bring it back on course please?thanks!LouiseDead Horses Host